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Three Essays On The Political Economy Of The Cfa Franc, Francis Perez Oct 2022

Three Essays On The Political Economy Of The Cfa Franc, Francis Perez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is organized into three essays. The second essay provides a historical overview of the CFA franc and explores why the CFA franc has survived for so long. It argues that a historical and dialectical materialist analysis of the CFA’s history can best explain both its extraordinary longevity and the periodic major reforms to its functioning. The third essay assesses whether the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) has an independent monetary policy by examining the relationships between BCEAO’s foreign reserves and base money, and between BCEAO and the European Central Banks’s policy rates. The fourth essay evaluates …


The Political Economy Of The Cost Of Foreign Exchange Intervention, Devika Dutt Oct 2021

The Political Economy Of The Cost Of Foreign Exchange Intervention, Devika Dutt

Doctoral Dissertations

Central Banks around the world increasingly intervene in the foreign exchange market for a variety of reasons, such as maintaining exchange rate stability and maintaining a buffer against the impact of capital flight. In fact, research shows that central banks can lean against the macroeconomic policy trilemma through maintaining reserves and intervening in the foreign exchange market, and thereby secure policy space. However, securing this policy space can come at substantial cost. This dissertation explores the political economy of these costs of foreign exchange intervention. Chapter I discusses the concept of the direct cost of intervention, calculates these costs for …


Essays On Exchange Rate Shocks And The Political Economy Of Local Fiscal Policy In Brazil, Raphael Rocha Gouvea Apr 2021

Essays On Exchange Rate Shocks And The Political Economy Of Local Fiscal Policy In Brazil, Raphael Rocha Gouvea

Doctoral Dissertations

Do exchange rate shocks have distributional consequences? Does employment respond to exchange rate shocks? Do political parties matter when it comes to governing cities? Each chapter of this dissertation attempts to answer one of these questions in the Brazilian context. In the first chapter, titled Large devaluations and inflation inequality: evidence from Brazil, I show that prices of tradable goods/lower-priced varieties increase significantly more than the prices of nontradables/higher-priced varieties. These relative price changes may lead to inflation inequality when household consumption baskets are different across the distribution of income. Using Cravino and Levchenko (2017)'s methodology, we show that …


Three Essays On Gender-Specific Employment Outcomes Of Macroeconomic Policies, Selin Secil Akin Jul 2020

Three Essays On Gender-Specific Employment Outcomes Of Macroeconomic Policies, Selin Secil Akin

Doctoral Dissertations

This three-essay dissertation examines the impact of fiscal and monetary policies on gender-disaggregated employment outcomes both theoretically and empirically. The first essay constructs a structuralist macroeconomic model that explores channels whereby fiscal and monetary policies impact women’s paid and unpaid work. The essay discusses two factors related to labor market segregation that can explain differential effects of macroeconomic policies on male and female employment: the labor intensity of female-dominated sectors, and different responses of capacity utilization to aggregate demand shocks in male and female-dominated sectors. In addition, a decline in output resulting from aggregate demand shocks may increase women’s unpaid …


Understanding China’S Discourse On South-South Cooperation And China-Africa Higher Education Exchange: A Field Research Study At Zhejiang Normal University’S China-Africa International Business School, Yi Sun Oct 2019

Understanding China’S Discourse On South-South Cooperation And China-Africa Higher Education Exchange: A Field Research Study At Zhejiang Normal University’S China-Africa International Business School, Yi Sun

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation research attempts to distinguish China’s model from that of the traditional North-South relationship, with a focus on how China’s philosophy articulates its foreign policy and the nation’s higher education engagement with African countries. It examines the China-Africa higher education partnership in response to China’s discourse on South-South Cooperation (SSC), Africa’s human resource flows, and the benefits and constraints of current China-Africa cooperation. In order to achieve these goals, the dissertation uses one of the China-Africa partnership universities in China, Zhejiang Normal University (ZJNU) as a site for its field research. The fieldwork looks at both a student level …


Bangladesh's Energy Policy: Economic, Environmental, And Climate Change Impacts, Rohini Kamal Oct 2019

Bangladesh's Energy Policy: Economic, Environmental, And Climate Change Impacts, Rohini Kamal

Doctoral Dissertations

The research examines Bangladesh’s energy policies with respect to development, climate change, and environmental risks by comparing three plans for 2050: business-as-usual (BAU), a government renewable plan, and an alternate green plan, along five aspects: investment costs, employment, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, environmental costs, and social costs. The model used is an Input Output Model, which calculates factor inputs (land, water, labor, emissions: GHG and co-pollutants) for energy-related sectors considered in the three plans. To apply the model to specific plants for a more accurate estimate of localized environmental and social costs, and to analyze distributional impacts, a supplemental field-study …


The Political Economy Of Accumulation In South Africa: Resource Extraction, Financialization, And Capital Flight As Barriers To Investment And Employment Growth, Seeraj Mohamed Mar 2019

The Political Economy Of Accumulation In South Africa: Resource Extraction, Financialization, And Capital Flight As Barriers To Investment And Employment Growth, Seeraj Mohamed

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses a heterodox economics approach to explain poor levels of accumulation in South Africa. This approach to investment theory and models recognizes that many institutions are shaped to help people create stability in a world of fundamental uncertainty and irreversibility. Therefore, this dissertation examines the system of accumulation that developed in South Africa and its evolution. This approach to investment recognizes that beliefs and biases of people running institutions influence investment outcomes and shape ‘path dependence’. The corporations that grew to dominate the South African economy were formed during colonialism and apartheid. They grew around a core of …


Social Structure Of Accumulation In Turkey (1963 – 2015), Osman C. Icoz Nov 2018

Social Structure Of Accumulation In Turkey (1963 – 2015), Osman C. Icoz

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes capitalism in Turkey during post-1963 period from social structure of accumulation (SSA) theory perspective. The SSA theory is a theory of interaction of institutions and capital accumulation over long run. This dissertation will be the first book length study on Turkey using SSA Theory approach. It will enrich the SSA literature by adding a case of Turkey, which is a developing country; and hence it will be another example that SSA framework can be extended outside of US. I observe two different SSAs during the period of interest. The first one is Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) SSA …


Essays In Financial Economics: Announcement Effects In Fixed Income Markets, James J. Forest Oct 2018

Essays In Financial Economics: Announcement Effects In Fixed Income Markets, James J. Forest

Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT ESSAYS IN FINANCIAL ECONOMICS: ANNOUNCEMENT EFFECTS IN FIXED INCOME MARKETS PHD IN FINANCE MAY 2018 JAMES J FOREST B.A., FRAMINGHAM STATE UNIVERSITY M.S., NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS – AMHERST Directed by: Professor Hossein B. Kazemi This dissertation demonstrates the use of empirical techniques for dealing with modeling issues that arise when analyzing announcement effects in fixed income markets. It describes empirical challenges in achieving unbiased and efficient parameter estimates and shows the importance of modelling a wide range of macroeconomic announcement effects to avoid omitted variable bias. Employing techniques common in Macroeconomics, financial market researchers are better …


Currency Mismatch And Balance Sheet Effects Of Exchange Rate In Turkish Non-Financial Corporations, Serkan Demirkilic Nov 2017

Currency Mismatch And Balance Sheet Effects Of Exchange Rate In Turkish Non-Financial Corporations, Serkan Demirkilic

Doctoral Dissertations

Until the East Asian Crisis of 1990s, literature exclusively focused on the assumed expansionary competitiveness channel of deprecation in the domestic currency. The East Asian and Latin American Crisis of 1990s proved that depreciation in the domestic currency caused fragilities through the deterioration in firms’ balance sheet net- worth. Many have argued that excessive reliance on short-term debt and un-hedged foreign currency borrowings of firms were responsible of fragilities, and resulting poor performances of firms in these countries. The latter body of the literature introduced the contractionary balance sheet effects of foreign currency indebtedness through depreciation, and argued that if …


Three Essays On International Economics And Finance, Juan Antonio Montecino Jul 2017

Three Essays On International Economics And Finance, Juan Antonio Montecino

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation studies the macroeconomic and social impacts of two increasingly common macroeconomic policies: restrictions on international capital mobility -- capital controls -- and so-called unconventional monetary policy -- often referred to as “quantitative easing.” The consensus view is that capital controls can effectively lengthen the maturity composition of capital inflows and increase the independence of monetary policy but are not generally effective at reducing net inflows and influencing the real exchange rate. The first essay presents empirical evidence that although capital controls may not directly affect the long-run equilibrium level of the real exchange rate, they may enable disequilibria …


Master's Tools And The Master's House: A Historical Analysis Exploring The Myth Of Educating For Democracy In The United States, Timothy Scott Mar 2017

Master's Tools And The Master's House: A Historical Analysis Exploring The Myth Of Educating For Democracy In The United States, Timothy Scott

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past forty-years, neoliberal education reform policies in the U.S. have spurred significant resistance, often galvanized by claims that such policies undermine public education as a vital institution of U.S. democracy. Within this narrative, many activists call to “save our schools” and return them to a time when public schools served the common good. With these narratives in mind, I explore the foundational and persistent power structures that characterize the U.S. as a means to reveal the fundamental purpose of its public education system. The questions that guide my research include: (1) With an understanding that capitalism, white supremacy, …


Three Essays On Labor Market Friction And The Business Cycle, Jong-Seok Oh Nov 2016

Three Essays On Labor Market Friction And The Business Cycle, Jong-Seok Oh

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the macroeconomic impact of reduced labor market friction on the U.S. business cycle after the mid-1980s. The first two essays investigate the relationship between labor market flexibility and macroeconomic stability from a post-Keynesian perspective. In the third essay which reviews the relationship between labor market flexibility and patterns of U.S. business cycle, I test the argument that after 1985 Okun’s coefficient became larger due to the flexible labor market. In essay 1, considering two aspects of labor market flexibility, employment flexibility and real wage flexibility, I adopt the flex-output model (Skott, 2015) to first discuss employment flexibility …


Three Essays On The Macroeconomic Impacts Of Rent Seeking, Kurt Von Seekamm Nov 2016

Three Essays On The Macroeconomic Impacts Of Rent Seeking, Kurt Von Seekamm

Doctoral Dissertations

Chapter 1 of this dissertation focuses on the political economy of rent seeking. Using trading in financial markets, patent litigation and managerial privilege as descriptive examples from the modern economy, it identifies situations where rent seeking opportunities occur. The challenge of correctly distinguishing between productive activities and rent seeking activities demonstrate the empirical challenges of examining rent seeking. This chapter also suggests that in addition to the opportunity cost of physical capital, modern rent seeking has a significant opportunity cost in the form of the misallocation of human capital. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between increased rent seeking, aggregate demand, …


Three Essays On U.S. Household Debt And The Sources Of Systemic Financial Fragility, Thomas Herndon Nov 2016

Three Essays On U.S. Household Debt And The Sources Of Systemic Financial Fragility, Thomas Herndon

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays which analyze the role of household debt in the financial crisis of 2007-2009, and weak recovery that followed. In these essays, I pursue the following research topics: 1) Estimation of the effects of mortgage fraud on losses to foreclosure, 2) Estimation of whether loan modifications increased or decreased debt, and 3) Analyzing the historical evolution of housing finance regulation to advance a proposal for reform. While formally independent, these essays share a common theoretical perspective located at the intersection of financial macroeconomics and political economy. These essays analyze how conflicts of interest and inside …


Essays On Inequality, Credit Constraints, And Growth In Contemporary Mexico, Leopoldo Gómez-Ramírez Nov 2015

Essays On Inequality, Credit Constraints, And Growth In Contemporary Mexico, Leopoldo Gómez-Ramírez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents four essays on inequality, credit constraints, and economic growth in the Mexican economy in its recent history, or “contemporary Mexico”. In the first essay, it is argued that the possibility that wealth/income inequality could affect economic growth has been neglected in the contemporary Mexican economy literature. Also, preliminary thoughts on the channels through which inequality could have been affecting growth are offered. In the second essay, a time series, macroeconometric analysis on the possible relationship between inequality and aggregate production (GDP) in Mexico is presented. The analysis suggests that an increase in inequality boosts the economy, but …


Three Essays On Macroeconomic Implications Of Contemporary Financial Intermediation, Hyun Woong Park Nov 2015

Three Essays On Macroeconomic Implications Of Contemporary Financial Intermediation, Hyun Woong Park

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation contributes to the growing literature on macroeconomic models with a financial intermediary sector. The first two chapters use the circuit of capital modeling methodology to study the relation between growth and profitability in capitalist economy where credit is essential, and the third uses a more standard macrodynamic model to investigate how securitized banking, which relies on short-term collateralized borrowing, as opposed to traditional commercial banking, generates procyclical bank leverage, which in turn leads to supply-led fluctuation in credits and ultimately to a boom-bust cycle of asset prices. In chapter 1, I extend the baseline model of circuit of …


Financialization Of The Commodities Futures Markets And Its Effects On Prices, Manisha Pradhananga Nov 2014

Financialization Of The Commodities Futures Markets And Its Effects On Prices, Manisha Pradhananga

Doctoral Dissertations

After declining for almost three decades, the food price index of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) rose by 90 percent between January 2002 and June 2008. Besides the magnitude, the rise in prices was remarkable for its breadth, affecting a broad range of commodities including agricultural (wheat, corn, soybeans, cocoa, coffee), energy (crude oil, gasoline), and metals (copper, aluminum). According to the US Department of Agriculture, this price spike was responsible for increasing the number of malnourished people by 80 million. These dramatic developments in prices coincided with a rapid inflow of investment into the commodities futures market -- …


Three Essays In Macroeconomic History, Joshua W. Mason Nov 2014

Three Essays In Macroeconomic History, Joshua W. Mason

Doctoral Dissertations

Following Minsky, an economy can be understood as a set of units linked to each other by flows of money payments and by the commitments to future payments reflected on balance sheets. This dissertation offers three accounts of the historical evolution of the US economy, conceived of a network of balance sheets, over the course of 20th and early 21st century. The first essay looks at changes in the pattern of payment flows between nonfinancial corporations and financial markets associated with the ``shareholder revolution" of the 1980s. It argues that the shift in payouts to shareholders from a quasi-fixed stream …


Output Fluctuations And Economic Growth In Latin America In The Aftermath Of The Great Recession, Gonzalo Hernandez Jimenez Nov 2014

Output Fluctuations And Economic Growth In Latin America In The Aftermath Of The Great Recession, Gonzalo Hernandez Jimenez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the short and long run effects of the Great Recession on Latin America. For the short run, this study evaluates (i) the existence of a business cycle co-movement between the US and Latin America, (ii) the role of the Latin American export structure as an aspect that may amplify the growth spillover effects of the output fluctuations in the US, and (iii) the terms of trade as a determinant of the short run output fluctuations in Colombia, a primary commodity exporter that resembles the assumptions of open small dependent economies. Consistent with the historical evidence, the US …


The Financial Underpinnings Of The Eu Crisis: Financial Deregulation, Privatization, And Asymmetric State Power, Nina Q. Eichacker Nov 2014

The Financial Underpinnings Of The Eu Crisis: Financial Deregulation, Privatization, And Asymmetric State Power, Nina Q. Eichacker

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation asks the following questions. How has financial liberalization affected the incidence of financial crisis in Europe? How have power asymmetries within Western Europe facilitated the process of financial liberalization, and distributed the costs and gains from this liberalization? How have these dynamics been demonstrated at the state level? It charts the institutional liberalization and privatization of European finance from the 1960s onward and presents a survey of descriptive statistics that show how different financial stability, financial flow, and macroeconomic variables have changed in Western Europe since the early 1980s, generally increasing financial and economic instability. It also demonstrates …


The Financialization Of The Nonfinancial Corporation In The Post-1970 U.S. Economy, Leila Emami Davis Nov 2014

The Financialization Of The Nonfinancial Corporation In The Post-1970 U.S. Economy, Leila Emami Davis

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the financialization of nonfinancial corporations (NFCs), emphasizing changes in firm-level financial behavior in the post-1970 U.S. economy. The dissertation consists of four essays. These essays ask what is the financialization of NFCs, explore why NFCs have ‘financialized’, and evaluate the implications for fixed investment behavior. Chapter 2 lays out a simple stylized framework describing firm-level portfolio choice and utilizes this framework to analyze the implications of increasing NFC involvement in the provision of financial services, increasingly entrenched shareholder value norms, and rising firm-level demand volatility for NFC financial structure. By articulating underlying determinants of firm-level portfolio and …


The Financial Sector And Inclusive Development In Africa: Essays On Access To Finance For Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises In South Sudan And Kenya, James A. Garang Aug 2014

The Financial Sector And Inclusive Development In Africa: Essays On Access To Finance For Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises In South Sudan And Kenya, James A. Garang

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation, consisting of three essays, uses data from field surveys of banks and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) conducted in South Sudan and Kenya from July 2011 through September 2012. The first essay examines the role of financial sector development in expanding access to finance by SMEs in Kenya. We find that while the financial system in general, and the Central Bank of Kenya in particular, have made headway in expanding financial inclusion in Kenya, small firms continue to face more constraints in access to finance compared to larger firms. The policy emphasis on financial inclusion, coupled with the …